


Crashing and Keeping

by brightpinkspikes



Category: X-Men Evolution
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Denial of Feelings, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mild Language, Mutual Pining, Not Beta Read, Sort of Slow Burn? Except they're Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 19:33:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20441330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightpinkspikes/pseuds/brightpinkspikes
Summary: Todd Tolansky’s life is not a simple one. Maybe if he had been born human things would have been different. Or maybe if his mother hadn’t given him up as a kid. Or if he had been the son of his mother’s Soulmate. Or maybe if the bastard hadn’t gone off and died. Or maybe if he’d had someone, anyone, who cared enough about him to make sure he stayed out of trouble. That’s not how life turned out, unfortunately. Instead, he was given what he got, no exchanges and no sympathy.Then he slams (literally whole-body crashes) into his Soulmate. Things don’t get any simpler.





	Crashing and Keeping

**Author's Note:**

> This one's beem rattling around in my head for a while now. Kurt/Todd was one of my baby ships, (read: first hyperfixations) so I have a habit of rounding back to them in between big fandoms. There's only one other Soulmate fic in their tag and I'm just??? Confounded. Soulmate stuff is my jam. I get it though; When I was younger I always read these two as an exciting teenage fling. It was fun! But the world sucks now and all I want is for these nice boys to have long-lasting stable relationships. So, the universe got involved and now they have to! After a suitable amount of kicking and screaming to get there of course.

Soulmates are a perfect match. Two people, (Or more if you’re lucky enough) who will grow with you, love you and need you as much as you need them. You’re not guaranteed to meet of course. You’re not guaranteed to get along right away. Some people never reach their Soulmates; Others meet them at the wrong time. They’ll meet once, say just the wrong thing and not speak to each other again for another ten years. The day you meet, your Soulmate is supposed to be the best day of your life. Finding your other half is supposed to be the turn down easy street. It is for many. For many more, it isn’t. Maybe they meet their other half in the middle of a catastrophe. Maybe they meet on the last day of their lives. Maybe they just have different priorities. In any case, no matter how good or bad the day is, it’s going to be significant.

‘_What are you? Some kind of ratty plush toy?_’ It’s a significant thing to hear. Kurt has heard plenty of insults, but few have been so… creative. Fewer still have stung the way his Mark had. It was the first thing he’d learned to read in English. In sharp lines, clearly written, it’s branded just below his collar bone. If he focuses on anything but what the Words mean, he can dream. The curve of the handwriting indicates someone with a confident hand. They write quickly, but it’s still legible, still concise. His mother said that means his Soulmate will be someone famous, who writes essential things all day. Kurt’s father said they’d be a teacher or an office worker or court reporter, someone who beats out word after word hour after hour. His mother says that those things are all plenty important. They bicker back and forth about it the way they do everything else.

His parents have an enormous collection of books. Their television doesn’t get a good signal, deep as they are into the woods. As a boy, his mother would read to him. Soulmates litter the books; Beautiful people who tumble into each other’s lives and change the world. Their Words are always fascinating, funny, and sweet. Or they’re dramatic or misleading. Words drive the plot and change the world. Wolfgang Wagner has ‘_Warum hast du ein Schwert?!_’ (_Why do you have a sword?!_) across his left ankle. Margali Wagner has ‘_Warum nicht du?_’ (_Why don’t you?_) across her right. It’s the kind of thing you’d find in his father’s books; The Genteel lady finding a Dastardly Pirate hiding in her boudoir. Instead, he’d had the wrong location for fencing practice, and she’d had the realization that she should own a taser. He bought her one a week later.

A good sixth of the population has something along the lines of ‘_Oh! It’s you!_’ for Words. His parents have the kind of match people write stories about. His parents talk around his Words. It’s not something that comes up every day. It’s something that hides in the background, between the lines of their lives. It sits on his chest, crushing his lungs between his breaths. They talk about the shape of the letters and how dark they are. They talk about how sweet his Soulmate must be to leave a Mark so close to his heart. They brainstorm how to get him out of town, to meet people outside the village without another incident. If his mother smooths out his fur with a velvet brush, it’s just because she loves the way it shines afterward. They never talk about how his Soulmate thinks he looks _ratty_.

Anyone else would hate his Words. He doesn’t, most of the time. Kurt’s met more people than one might think, in his isolated life. There are only so many ways people will react to seeing someone like him. People are confused by him. They can be angry or scared. He doesn’t look like anything they’ve seen in real life. A lot of people scream. Others go quiet. They introduce themselves, polite and succinct. It’s almost worse than the screaming. No one wants any confusion. No one wants to take the chance that the monster could be their Soulmate. Kurt’s Soulmate is different. His Soulmate doesn’t scream or delicately tell Kurt their name. They make a stupid joke.

When he lies awake at night staring at his ceiling and wondering how he’s supposed to meet anyone new when his parents don't let him leave the house, he thinks it’s got to be a joke. It must be. The alternative is that the first thing his Soulmate will say to him is an insult. The universe decided that he deserved that. The person who he’ll spend the rest of his life with is going to have to learn to like him, much less love him. All because he looks like this. Kurt hopes it’s a joke.

* * *

Todd's parents were not soul mates. If they had been, maybe his life would have been easier. His father was one of the many men who promised to take care of his mother. He was also a rat bastard who ran off the first chance he got. Todd ’s not the only Unmatched baby in the world. He certainly wasn’t the only one bouncing around the foster system. It hadn’t mattered to his mother when she was still around. She was crazy and stupid and mean, but she loved him despite everything. She had met her Soulmate at fifteen. They’d both been runaways, crashing around the streets of New York convinced they’d live forever. Then good old Mort got shot at nineteen. Four years with your Soulmate isn’t precisely the happily ever after they’d been promised.

Todd won’t ever forget the way his mother’s Mark looked, scarred over and grey on the underside of her foot. ‘_Hey there, pretty lady._’ Soulmates aren't supposed to meet at 15. There are stories about it happening of course, in lousy teen movies and the like. Todd had never been one for romcoms. Well, that's what he says when he's asked, like any other teenage boy. Romcoms aren’t the only movies were Soulmates find each other though; In explosive action movies and epic sci-fi, Soulmates are there, finding each other and falling in love. It's all bullshit. Todd tries not to put much stock into the whole Soulmate business. The keyword here is tries.

His whole life he’s been fed the idea that Soulmates are your one and only. No one else will understand you the way they will. No one else will love you the way they will. How can they? They’ll always be looking for their own Soulmate, trying to fill that hole in their heart. Todd doesn’t think he’s got a hole; He’ got a gorge under his ribs. He falls fast and hard for anybody who looks at him twice, but they never stick around. He moves from home to home, school to school, town to town, and all that he can take with him is what can fit in a backpack. The only constant in his life is the Words on his wrist. ‘_That’s just rude!_’

His mother would laugh at the Words. She taught him to stick out his tongue at strangers everywhere they went. They’d make silly noises at each other in the shops. She never scolded him for shouting in the house or running down the hall. Somehow it rearranged the wires in his head. He was a quiet, well behaved little kid until his mother got upset. The minute he saw her frown, he’d start bouncing off the walls, cursing and screaming. When he was little, it would work the way he thought it would. She would smile, laugh, put aside whatever was weighing her down to pick him up and kiss his cheek. It didn’t work as well when he got older. One day it stopped working at all. The instinct didn’t leave him, even after she smacked him upside the head and shouted right back. After he went into the system, and after he promptly bailed on the system, whenever someone moped within his line of sight, he’d pop off a lude joke. Slowly he learns that playing the clown will earn him more friends, even if he loses a little more self-respect. But he still gets the urge to shout the most inappropriate thing he can think of when people cry.

Folks tell him he’s rude all the time. People huff and puff as they storm off. He gets a lot of ‘_How dare you!_’s and ‘_Well I never!_’s. They’re not his Words exactly, but it still thrills him. He’ll follow the ones who turn up their noses at him like a lost puppy. He learns little things, little niceties that placate uppity people enough to get their attention. Everyone still laughs or sneers, but he makes a smattering of friends here and there. Not many, not nearly enough, but people can stand him. He takes note of every glare and does whatever he can think of to wipe it away. It rarely works. He keeps trying anyway. He needs to figure out how to get them to like him. If he can, then winning over his Soulmate will be a piece of cake. His Soulmate is going to be just like these kids. They’ll probably be the opposite of Todd, clean and polite and proper. He needs to impress them somehow, make them like him.

It’s supposed to be easy. Your Soulmate is supposed to love you, no matter what. Todd knows better. He’s been promised good things in life before, only to be let down again and again. He prays like hell that meeting his Soulmate is far off. He still needs more time to figure out how people work. He doesn’t know how to get them to stay. He needs his Soulmate to stay. He’s not going to survive with just four years of happiness. He’ll go as crazy as his mother did. He’ll wait for as long as it takes, learns everything he can because when Todd finds his Soulmate, he’s never letting go.

**Author's Note:**

> A smaller first chapter, sort of just to see if anyone bites? I haven't actually posted a fic in years, and I've got no Beta, so please feel free to leave some critique if you like.


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